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Wednesday, July 1, 2015

R E S P E C T

I recently read a romance novel that was recommended by a friend. It was a well-written Regency-set historical, which kept me reading despite the presence of a trope I really hate, the Evil Mother.

All too often, the Evil Mother is used to explain (and excuse) an alpha hero's misogyny. This book took it up a notch. The mother was intentionally cruel to one of her children (the hero). He also had an unfaithful ex-fiancée who confirmed his worldview that women are not to be trusted and love will destroy a man.

Sometimes a misogynist alpha hero is so cartoonish that I can enjoy the book ironically and revel in his eventual grovel and redemption by the love of the heroine. This book's alpha hero was not at all cartoonish. He was entirely realistic in the way he acted on his attraction to the heroine, seduced her into not-quite-proper behavior, then treated her with contempt. He was also realistic in the way he sincerely apologized the next day with flowers and kind words, keeping her emotionally off-balance and reeling her in.

That is precisely the way that abusers keep their victims in the relationship. As a child, I had a female relative who was occasionally beaten by her husband. At least twice that I know of, she decided to leave him, only to come back after he presented her with a lavish gift and promised to never do it again. She finally had enough and divorced him, but it took several years.

I find myself unable to believe in a hero who treats most women with contempt but magically recognizes that the heroine is different. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. For me, the best predictor of a Happily Ever After is the way the hero treats the other women in his life. He may be opposed to marriage or commitment, he may dislike and avoid a particular type of woman, but that does not require him to despise women in general.

The only romance with a misogynist hero that worked for me was The Dangerous Viscount by Miranda Neville. In that case, Sebastian was still a work in progress. He had very limited experience with women, and he was mainly parroting the opinions of the uncle who raised him. It wasn't so much a magical transformation as a gradual education that brought him around. He was also a victim of bullying and felt the need to act out a sort of revenge fantasy. I could deeply sympathize with that.

I greatly prefer heroes who like and respect women in general, even if they need to adjust their attitudes about a woman's proper place (after all, if there were no initial conflict, the book would be no fun).